Prey
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.King Arthur 2004. In the end, it is always the wolf.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and King Arthur belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Jerry Bruckheimer/Antoine Fuqua/Touchstone Pictures/David Franzoni/lots of other people who aren't me.

In the end, it is always the wolf.

The Woad woman is trouble. I could smell it on her from a league away. It's in her walk, in her expressions, in the way she glances at Arthur from the corners of her eyes. You see it simmering between them, the heat of a man and a woman, but the more dangerous thing is the cause that she lives for, breathes for, that you can see burning in her eyes like you can see his God burning in his. She wants him for more than he can give, for more than herself alone, and cares for nothing else in her need.

He does not understand that he is losing Buffy. He does not understand that she sees the fever between him and the Woad female, that she is not the kind of woman who can ignore it or knows what to do about it. She is too unsure of herself in this, she whom I've seen take an arrow to the breast for his sake, and that he should so openly show how affected he is by Guinevere wounds her beyond the telling.

The fort is a sight for our sore and wind-stung eyes when we finally ride in, the carriage of the Romans cradled between us. The bishop waits, arms outstretched for his Pope's darling.

Buffy is blue with cold, frozen near to death. The battle at the lake almost killed her, so desperately she fought. Dagonet rides beside her, the arrow-gash in his shoulder paining him not at all, and his eyes are all for her who saved his life.

Arthur does not hesitate, but immediately goes in to speak with the bishop. Before that, he sees to the care of the people we brought with us with such effort, especially to Guinevere's, who gives him a smile of dark-eyed sweetness.

He barely looks at Buffy, and does not speak to her. I can tell that he is still beside himself with worry and rage, still angry and terror-struck in his heart by Buffy's reckless actions against the Saxons. He does not trust himself to speak, and so does not, which is the kind of man Arthur is.

I understand this because I know Arthur, perhaps better than any man but Lancelot, and better than Lancelot when Arthur is silent. This does not hold true for Buffy. Her face as she looks after him is like an open wound, stricken to her marrow by his indifference. A man would have to be blind not to see that she is hurt to the heart, and even Bors is not so shortsighted.

Dagonet reaches out, as if he would put a hand to her shoulder, but Buffy wheels her horse and gives him his head for the stables. Her back is straight, her head held high, and her hair crackles in the chill as it moves.

Lancelot follows her, and the others look at each other and decide to keep the horses outside for the time being. I wait with them.

Scarcely moments later, Lancelot returns, and he shakes his head when the others look at him. I listen to them talk in low tones for a while, listen to them growling over Arthur's unusual heartlessness, and then I slip away and go to the stables.

She has removed the harness from her horse, rubbed him down, and put him in his stall, with plenty of feed to keep him content. She has taken no such care with herself, sitting in the straw still wet in her gear, her back to the wall. When I come in, she spears me with her look, suffering turned to temper.

"I don't need your pity," she whispers, and I see that coldness rising in her, the coldness only I seem able to see.

I ignore her. There is a blanket in her pack, sitting on the ground. I shake it out, can smell the faint scent of her hair and body in its folds, and take it to where she sits. She watches me warily, like a fox poised in the snow, as I kneel beside her.

Her hands are white with cold. When I take them in my handfuls of cloth, I can feel the ice in her flesh like a bitter sting on my skin, and I wonder that she is not taken by frostbite.

I rub her flesh back to life the same as I would do for a horse, and this calms and soothes her until her eyes flutter as she tries to stay awake. I do not attempt to take her out of her sodden clothes or even remove her belt or boots, for this is not what I am trying to do.

"I'll send Vanora," I tell her, standing, and she does not have the strength to even protest. This alone tells me how close to death she was, this creature who hates above all to be weak.

Outside, I find Gawain waiting. He eyes me like a dog would eye a bigger animal he is unsure will not bite.

"She needs rest," I say. "I am sending Vanora."

I walk away, toward the gate to fetch Bors's woman so that she might come and scold Buffy into resting, and I do not need to look back to know that Gawain stands there, looking at the stables, but does not go in.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and King Arthur belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Jerry Bruckheimer/Antoine Fuqua/Touchstone Pictures/David Franzoni/lots of other people who aren't me.

Each animal has its own way of making its kill. The lion uses strength, his natural muscle and might. The dog uses love, taming himself to the hand to be fed his meals.

The wolf has cunning.

Dagonet's boy does not go with the other children. He clings to Dagonet, his eyes wide and moving incessantly, and I know he looks for Buffy. I do not know what turn of his mind has brought him to this. Perhaps Dagonet reminds him of his father, and Buffy of his mother, or perhaps it is only that it was Dagonet who brought him out of that prison and Buffy who killed the Roman.

I make a small cradle of wood, on which I hang thread. It is easy enough with a sharp knife and a few quiet moments, and then I take these things to Buffy.

She looks at it, then at me, and says, "You, uh, you play with sticks often?"

I give her a smile, which I do not do for anyone but her these days. "It is for the boy."

Her eyes widen slightly, as if this is something she would not have expected of me. "Oh."

Buffy smiles, a small, tremulous smile that is the first any of us have seen since we returned.

We bring the toy to the child together, and Buffy smiles again to see him take it from her hand and begin to expertly loop the threads. I do not sit with them but to the side, farther away than Dagonet, and watch with him as the boy plays at the frame with her, teaching her this children's game. At some point Dagonet looks at me, a question in his eyes, but I pretend I do not see. He stares at me as if he is suspicious, but I have played my part too long for him to really know anything. Soon enough he forgets me and turns his attention to Buffy and the boy, and I watch him awhile, taking the measure of the manner in which he looks at her. Dagonet has always been harder to read than any of the others, and I do not want to be caught off of my guard.

When one of the sticks I used breaks, cracking in Buffy's fingers, Dagonet laughs to see their stricken expressions. I go to sit beside her then, close enough that her hip presses against mine, and set to fixing it, both Buffy and the boy staring in quiet enthrallment as I mend it at no trouble with another stick I brought for just this purpose. The smell of her hair is like an open field on the steppe, the clean and pure air of a home I have not seen in nearly seventeen years.

It is then, as we lean together, like two horses bearing each other up in a high wind, that Arthur stops in the doorway of the hearth room, looking for her.

He says nothing. I can pretend well enough not to see him, as I only notice his presence at the corner of my eye, my face turned toward the fire. Buffy's back is to him and she is whispering with the boy. She knows he is there, for I feel her body tense against mine, but she waits for him to speak.

Arthur turns and goes away.

Dagonet's eyes are dark, his mouth a pale line. He stands abruptly and strides from the room, and I know that he is going to lose his temper with Arthur, a thing that has not happened in almost ten years. But it is too late.

I feel her heart breaking, cracking in two like a stick of wood.

The boy looks at her, at me, and then down at the toy. I have put it right, and hand it to him. Buffy and I watch, wordless and suddenly dull, as he continues to make his intricate figures.

Sometimes, I do not understand her. I have seen her ride into battle like a daughter of Wasterzhi, fighting as no one and nothing I have ever seen, a matchless warrior. I have seen her bear wounds and ignore pain that would kill a grown Sarmatian warrior and fell a Roman legionnaire through shock alone. I have seen her throw herself wholeheartedly into an impossible fight for the sake of nothing more than friendship and turn the tide with nothing but her own skill and resolve. I remember her as she rode into the Saxons, killing and maiming, screaming for Dagonet to get up.

But the sight of Arthur turning from her destroys her completely.

The quarrel between Arthur and Dagonet is the stuff of legend bare heartbeats after it happens. The Romans look on, keenly interested to finally, after nearly two decades, see a gap forming in the ranks. Bors, drunk, curses Arthur for a fool and hies Dagonet off before there can be violence. Galahad and Lancelot do not interfere, but sit to the side with disapproval on their faces. Gawain struggles with his rage, unable to do or say anything for the turmoil in his own breast.

Guinevere watches from the shadows, eyes bright in the firelight.

That night, Buffy does not go to the quarters she shares with Arthur, but sleeps in the hall with the female servants.

I am uncertain where Guinevere sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and King Arthur belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Jerry Bruckheimer/Antoine Fuqua/Touchstone Pictures/David Franzoni/lots of other people who aren't me.

The wolf knows himself. He keeps his temper while others sink into despair or soar with anger. He knows how to portion out his fury and hate, his spite and malice. He knows how to preserve the best parts of himself against that day when he might need them to kill and eat while others starve, or win a mate where others fail and die childless, their bloodlines lost to dust.

He is patient.

Arthur does not know what to do. I can see the anguish in the emptiness of his face, in the way he will not speak to her or meet her eyes but watches her when he thinks no one is looking. I hear it in the way he paces his room at night, trying to think of a way to bridge this gorge that has opened between them. Arthur is a soldier, a commander, a legionnaire, and Christian at that; talk of love does not come easy to him.

The Woad woman is full and lush with her triumph. I can see that she thinks she has already won, has driven her rival from Arthur's bed and now awaits only the right moment to sway him to herself. She has more than halfway got her people the half-breed chieftain they want so much, and never do they mind the girl they have trampled into the dirt to do it.

Buffy sleeps in Vanora's house now, which makes Bors strangely protective of her, as if she were his daughter or sister. The servants refused to let her sleep on the floor with them after that first night, and so Vanora took her in, browbeating Bors into acceptance. Gilly brings her pretty stones and flowers and tussles with Dagonet's boy out of jealousy. Dagonet's boy gives as good as he gets.

We hear that the Saxons are coming, and the bishop makes ready to depart, except Alecto will hear nothing of it. He is determined to stay, and perhaps this has nothing to do with how he stares at Buffy when she is to be seen. The bishop and Alecto's mother implore Arthur to talk him into leaving, but Arthur endures the coils of his own serpents and has no heart for it.

I avoid seeing or speaking to Buffy for a day, made easier by the necessity of scouting the path the Saxons will take. When I return, it is late, and Buffy is already asleep.

I go into that part of the fort where Arthur has his chambers. As I pass the hearth room, I see that Arthur sits before the fire, his hands clasped as he prays. His eyes are open.

I come in and sit, and for a while he does not look at me. I put a skin of wine on the table, and also two drinking cups.

He glances at me then. "You know I do not imbibe."

I shrug. "It seemed the night to make an exception."

He does not take his cup but I pour anyway, and drink deep of mine. He watches the fire and says nothing, and I do not expect him to. Unlike the others, we have always spoken to each other mostly by not speaking at all.

But he surprises me.

"I do not know how to go to her," he says softly. His hands are still folded in prayer. "I want to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness, but I do not know how."

I think on this. "The Woad?"

"She is beautiful," he says tersely, "but she is not Buffy."

Arthur hesitates, and then I see a thing I can hardly believe, that of his face softening so that I can clearly see the uncertainty and fear in his eyes. They say more than could an hour of careful talk—he is terrified, going out of his mind, that he is losing her.

"I prayed for guidance," he says, "but God is silent."

What does your high and mighty God know about love and lust? I want to ask. I could tell him now what he is doing that is driving her away, except that is not my purpose here. I do not answer him, but only sip the wine.

He gives in, then, and takes the first cupful in one long draught down his throat, notable in a man who has never drunk before. I refill his cup and he takes that, too, and then for a while we do not speak.

I had meant to talk more with him, except he is undone by the drinking far sooner than I expected. I drag him into his quarters and leave him in his bed, the air thick and heady with the wine-reek. He will regret this in the morning.

On the way out, for I do not plan to sleep in the fort this night, I come by Guinevere. She examines me from the doorway of the hearth room, eyes flashing as she tries to get the measure of me. I stare back, giving nothing. Here is a woman who is used to getting what she wants, who knows the effect she has on men like Arthur and Lancelot by the loveliness of her face alone.

"Where is Arthur?" she questions, and her voice is light and blithe, as if she means nothing by that.

"In his room," I answer.

A smile curves her lips, and an expression like fire fills her face. Here is a woman who recognizes opportunity.

She slips past me in the dark. I do not need her to tell me where she is going.

I think of Buffy. It occurs to me that I could stop Guinevere, that I could bar the way into Arthur's room and, in the morning, explain to Arthur how it is that he is letting the one he loves slip through his fingers.

No. That is not my way.

Let them do as they will, I decide, and reap the consequences of their own actions. I am not a Christian; lecture is not one of my talents.

I go from there, and look long at Vanora's house as I pass.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and King Arthur belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Jerry Bruckheimer/Antoine Fuqua/Touchstone Pictures/David Franzoni/lots of other people who aren't me.

Wolf packs are most vulnerable to themselves. One season of starving or one she-wolf in rut can tear a pack apart. A strong dominant male can stop this from happening, but not if he allows himself to be compromised as well.

What a man does with women should have nothing to do with what he does in war. Arthur is our commander, our chief, and this does not change no matter what we may think privately of how he has treated a girl, however dear to us she has become.

But it cannot be unsaid that he has lost some measure of respect from us.

Buffy occupies a strange place in our lives. We are men and warriors, and so she can never be truly a comrade, but we are also Sarmatians, whose foremothers were those killers of men, the _hamazan_, whom the Greeks made so much of. Traditionally we had our female warriors, women of great respect and stature in our own tribes, so Buffy is not something completely strange to us, and in fact is a figure worthy of respect. She is not Sarmatian, but she is a warrior we understand and who could, if married into the clan, hold a position of high rank. That Arthur, a man who has cast aside his own mother-given birthright to wear the Roman scarlet, should so use such a female does not sit well with us, we Sarmatians who have never forgotten where we come from.

No one wants to talk of what happened. Buffy especially says nothing, but we often catch her looking away to the west, where lie nothing but the isle of the Gaels and the ocean, a thoughtful expression on her face.

It has been the subject of our whispers, the question of exactly what she has given up or renounced to stay here with Arthur. Now the question becomes one of whether or not she will leave.

The Woad woman has begun ordering the servants about, as if Arthur's house were hers. The women resent this, for, though a Briton Guinevere may be, until her coming everyone expected Arthur to marry Buffy, and it was her whom everyone treated as mistress. I know this through Vanora, who was the first to be turned away, being Buffy's staunchest supporter. Vanora does not care, for she always helped in Arthur's house as a favor to Buffy more than anything else, and is happy enough to have more time to give to her own family.

Buffy retrieved her things from the fort and now lives with Vanora and Bors, which pleases Vanora and catapults Bors to new heights of paternal feeling. Gawain and Galahad begin spending more time hanging about Vanora's kitchen than the kitchens of the fort, as does Dagonet, and the only reason Lancelot does not follow is because he is unwilling that all of us should abandon Arthur. The fort kitchens are a depressing place these days, and the Romans gaze like lost puppies through the gates at Vanora's house, where they are not allowed.

Guinevere pretends not to mind, but I can see how lonely she feels. Arthur can only be an inattentive lover at best, taken up by his duties and consumed with his regret. I know from Lancelot that Arthur longs for an escape, for some excuse to put aside the Woad and reclaim Buffy, but his morals dictate that this is now impossible, made so by his own actions. Unless the Woad leaves him, which I know will never happen, Arthur is hopelessly snared.

Buffy is more cheerful than we have ever seen her before. She laughs, she jokes, she even dances with Gilly when he implores her for a turn about the fire. She is lovely and bright, a sheathed blade when dressed for war, a spring flower when dressed for home. She does not speak of leaving.

Sometimes she stands and looks north, where the Saxons will come from once the snows break. Her hand rests on the hilt of her sword, and she smiles as she-wolves smile at the thought of meat.

Last night, Dagonet, Galahad, and Gawain sat in their corner and talked long and seriously. I saw them nod their heads and swear an oath of brotherhood, drinking wine mixed with drops of their blood to seal the promise.

The next morning, I take her to the mountains. I say that it is to judge the thickness of ice and the height of the snowdrifts, to see how soon the Saxons might be here, and she comes without protest. Vanora watches us go.

Outside the fort, beyond the Wall, I take us off the road and into the open, urging our horses on. We are not going north, and I make no attempt at concealment. The animals toss their heads and break into gallops, and when I look back it is as though she is a Sarmatian woman on the back of a warhorse, her hair streaming out behind her like fire in the sky.

We ride for miles, the hooves of the horses scattering the low-lying fog, our legs smeared with dew and green. The air is frigid with late winter, the ground as hard as the Roman emperor's heart. We ride until the horses are streaked with foam and sweat, and then I slow them to a walk, the sun burnished and low in the east, the morning half-gone.

When her horse pulls up beside mine, their flanks shivering with exertion, I look at her. I say nothing about the tears on her face, or the blood on her lip where she has bitten it. I say nothing about her shaking hands, the awkward posture of her shoulders.

My hand, when I lay it on her shoulder, against her back, is made large and ungainly by the shape of her.

She weeps silently, without looking at me, and the horses keep pace with each other, heads down with exhaustion. Buffy's head is lowered, a hand to her face, and I stay my hand on her, though whether it is to hold her up or keep her there, I do not know.

Beneath my hand, her bones are as small and fragile as a bird's.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and King Arthur belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Jerry Bruckheimer/Antoine Fuqua/Touchstone Pictures/David Franzoni/lots of other people who aren't me.

Wolves are generally pack creatures. They live together, sleep together, kill together, eat together. They mate and they love and they hate together.

But even wolves have their loners, those wolves who, for whatever reasons, prefer their solitude to the life of the pack. These are the wolves who live most by cunning, both the most wretched and the freest of all creatures in their loneliness.

These wolves resist the company of their own kind, or, if they are somehow induced to remain, at least keep aloof from the others, waiting for the day that they might again run free. Their loyalty chafes against their thirst for self-rule, and they strain at the bindings of love and brotherhood despite their every intention otherwise.

The Saxons are coming and the Romans are leaving. The Britons are caught in between, those people of Britannia who are neither Woads nor Roman citizens. Citizens could depart with the legionnaires, make their lives on the continent behind other Roman garrisons, and Woads have lived and fought like cornered creatures for generations, will continue to do so against the Saxons. Those Britons who lack both Roman citizenship and the will to live like rebels are caught between the loss of the legions and the coming of the horde. They are the ones who will suffer most, the men slaughtered, the women raped and killed and taken into thrall, the children receiving the worst of both.

I do not pity Guinevere. Perhaps I should, for she only wants to save her people, her land, and was willing to use whatever she had in order to achieve this. She is willing to lie with and marry a man she does not truly love to keep him here, to get for her beloved country the chieftain she needs. She is willing to put herself forward like the most brazen of women, earning for herself the contempt of Romans and Sarmatians and Britons alike, if that is what it takes to tie Arthur here, to the island the Woads call Albion.

All of that, while her heart lies with another. I have seen the way she looks at Lancelot, when no one else is looking and she feels that she is alone. I have seen the longing in her eyes, the bloom of a woman in love.

Yes, perhaps I do pity Guinevere. Not often, but sometimes, every now and then, when I see the way Lancelot looks at Buffy.

What tangled, knotty creatures we children of men are, like the ivy that creeps over the faces of rocks. I see the way Lancelot looks at Buffy, that slanted glance as if he looked at something too bright to stare at openly, the look of a man in love. I see how he hates himself for it, knowing that she was Arthur's woman, that Arthur loves her still. I see how he watches what is happening, how he is, despite himself, beginning to hope for more than he had ever thought possible.

Buffy does not speak of leaving. She speaks instead of the Saxon horde, of defenses and traps and some strange word she repeats, something like _werra_, that she says means what the Woads do against the Romans.

We understand that she is saying she is going to stay. She will remain in Britannia to fight the Saxons, with or without us. No one is surprised. Buffy is soft-hearted, foolishly so, with queer ideas about equality and justice that make Arthur's opinions on freedom and rights seem weak-kneed. Buffy was never going to abandon anyone to the horde, and in fact had to be restrained from going to the aid of the people in the north, the Caledonians who suffered the first assaults of the Saxon raiders.

I see in the others' eyes that they are torn. Here now is freedom, the bishop's discharge papers in our hands. The Romans are leaving, our fifteen years of service are up, and it is possible that, should we hurry, we might see our parents and our families again before they die. Our tribal lands lay in the east, the motherlands of our birth, the song that we have not heard in nearly two decades. The open steppe, the herds of horses, the tents and animals of the wandering clans—ours now, if we want it, if we would but take our papers and our pay and ride south.

Dagonet is the first to publicly make up his mind. He unpacks his belongings, reclaims his room in the fort, and begins to prepare his armor and weapons for war.

"I owe her my life," is all he says, and that is all that it takes for Bors, who after all has Vanora to think of, to declare his own intention to stay.

Gawain is the third, and he says nothing at all but only looks at her, at Buffy, his eyes saying everything for him.

Galahad follows Gawain's lead, as he usually does, and that leaves three: Arthur, Lancelot, and me.

Lancelot does not do things by half. He stops her in the courtyard, when Buffy is going from the smithy to the gate, where he thinks no one is watching.

"I'll stay," he tells her, and those two words, and the look on his face and the touch of his hand on her shoulder, mean more than any declaration of any kind.

She says nothing then, but meets his eyes, and her face, though hesitant, softens.

That night, I find her returning from the river, where she bathes every day, even when she must break the ice to get to the water.

"I am going home," I tell her. There is not much to what I have to say. "The Britons are not my people, and I have waited fifteen years."

She smiles. "I don't blame you," she says quietly. "Really."

The night is brutally cold, even for Britannia. There is frost on the ground, and our breath whiten the air like snow. Buffy walks with me to the fort, our every step a grind of dirt and hoar.

"When you get home," she tells me, "name one of your daughters after me."

"I am not that cruel," I say, and smile when she hits me with a small fist.

As we pass through the courtyard, I can see the stables from where we are, and movement catches my eye. I turn quickly from it.

"I have changed my mind," I say. "Let's go to Vanora's house. I'd rather tell the others myself."

She looks at me strangely. I am not sure what is in my face, or what my voice sounds like, but it makes her stop, makes her turn to see what I saw.

The sharp, sudden inhalation reveals more pain that I had thought possible. Buffy turns on her heel, walks as if she is running back toward the gate. I am forgotten entirely.

Lancelot catches her in the shadow of the gatehouse. His face is white, his hands desperate.

"This is not what it looks like," he hisses. "I swear! On my life and honor, Buffy, I swear!"

Buffy wrenches her arm from him and flies into the night, giving up any attempt at dignity.

I look at the stables, where Guinevere stands. She does not look like a slut, or a seductress. Her face is pale in the cold light of the moon, and she looks like a woman who has been stabbed in her heart, pain racking her face and body into something less than lovely and more than pitiful. Her hands, half-raised and reaching for nothing, seem to me to be the groping hands of a lost child.

I find Buffy at the river, sitting beneath a tree. Her skin is like ice even through her clothes and cloak, and I wrap my arm over her back and shoulders.

She does not cry. She only looks, weakly, at me, tired beyond grief or disappointment.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I didn't mean to keep you from leaving."

I let her lean against me, as if she were my sister or daughter, her head on my shoulder. I stroke her hair, the way you would comfort a fretful child.

"I don't think," I say quietly, "that I'm going to leave just yet."


End file.
